Buy it... if you rejoice in the challenging sounds of technical
experimentation in music, Benjamin Wallfisch pushing the boundaries of
post-processing to new levels in his attempt to surpass expectations for
a favorite horror tale.

Avoid it... if you still believe that subtlety can achieve greater
thrills than brute force, though Wallfisch may still appease you with a
decent countering of softly lyrical, dramatic interludes for the mystery
of the location and its children.

EDITORIAL REVIEW

FILMTRACKS TRAFFIC RANK: #1,833

WRITTEN
12/26/17

BUY IT

It: (Benjamin Wallfisch) After realized with
tremendous success in an Emmy-winning 1990 television adaptation,
Stephen King's "It" suffered an arduously long journey to the big screen
in the 2010's, burning through several crews and casts before director
Andy Muschietti triumphed in transforming the concept into a phenomenal
moneymaker for Warner. The project was met with widespread critical and
popular acclaim, spurring immediate plans for a sequel to continue the
exploration of the troll-like demon clown that terrorizes a small Maine
city every 27 years, as told by legend and experienced by local
children. Oblivious and abusive adults are equal villains in It,
a group of outcast children forming an alliance to investigate and save
one another from the sewer-dwelling "Pennywise the Dancing Clown" that
terrorizes them with realistic, life-threatening nightmares preying upon
their individual fears. It is because of movies like this (and including
Tim Curry's outstanding performance in the 1990 version) that clowns
have become the subject of ridicule and suspicion in pop culture, and
2017's It must only further this shift in perception. The
depictions of child dismemberment and death are horrific in this film,
earning its 'R' rating by aiming solely at adult audiences reliving the
angst of their teenage years. Thrown into the equation is a hint of
1980's mystery and adventure of a Steven Spielberg nature, It
attempting to straddle both worlds as it takes the wonderment of a
child's perseverance and forces it into battle against adult-oriented
horror thrills that include body mutilation and sexual assault. It's
amazing that audiences willingly embrace such disturbing material, but
if it makes them feel better about the comparatively tame misery in
their real lives, then so be it. The relatively even balance between
wondrous mystery, character depth, and outright horror in It
necessitated a hybrid soundtrack that pulls at the heart strings with
orchestral benevolence befitting 1980's nostalgia while also striving
for new methods of achieving the otherwise predictable horror element.
English composer Benjamin Wallfisch has used his association with Hans
Zimmer's Remote Control Productions as a springboard into a robust
career in the horror and thriller genres during 2016 and 2017, cranking
out a slew of such efforts, many of which pushing the limits of
processing technologies in the execution.

Regardless of your tolerance for the horror film score
genre in general, It supplies you with much to consider in its
highly developed methods. Even if you are not the type of person to
appreciate horror music in all its thrashing, dissonant glory, Wallfisch
at least provides you an interesting experience in how he achieves this
end. A strong argument can be made that there is gratuitous violence in
the music's extreme processing that could have been rendered unnecessary
by a more nuanced approach. Some listeners will rightfully claim that
during an age when visual effects struggle to continue dazzling viewers
when expectations have run so high, the ability of music to terrify
suffers from the same temptation by producers and composers to simply
add more processing and more layers to a cue in order to supply the same
additive thrill. What at one time soloists with a bassoon or muted
trumpet accomplished in the genre decades before is now supplanted by
dozens of layers of noise processed to make "music" that sufficiently
impresses modern studio executives and tired audiences. If you seek
subtlety in the distinctions between character warmth and suspenseful
thrills, It will disappoint you, but at least its textures in the
suspenseful variations on the character half will prove intriguingly
unsettling. A standard orchestra is joined by a small group of young
children singing an old English nursery rhyme, though that song is
distorted and chopped to bits in the process of the score's creation.
Some (sampled?) mature vocal chanting effects late in the work are a bit
eye-rolling in their grasping at faint Jerry Goldsmith/The Final
Conflict glory. Some listeners may believe a synthetic edge inhabits
the outright atonal horror sequences, especially in the cues that offer
loudly slashing and pounding metallic percussion effects, but the
recording sounds closer to a processing of mostly the symphonic
performance shrieks into insufferable combinations of noise. The scenes
involving Pennywise's infliction of nightmares (or actual harm) on the
children are typically met with a cacophonous wall of sound that
sometimes overlays shouted lyrics from the child singers for an
experience as unpleasant as any in the history of film music. Occasional
"cheap trick" manipulations, as in artificial crescendos with abruptly
edited conclusions plague a cue like "Deadlights," and moments like this
in It, even with creative strains of mixing around the edges, may
strain the patience of most listeners. Such material is truly impossible
to "enjoy" apart from context in any normal sense of that word.

The more lyrical, dramatic half of It is, not
surprisingly, where Wallfisch prevails, if only in brief interludes.
Being that this film's story is one of character bonding and coming of
age, not to mention the mystery of the town's legend, it makes sense to
hear some development of tonal ideas. The actual melodic structures of
these sequences are shy enough to avoid obvious memorability, but their
tone is the more important component to their success. A solo piano
performed by Wallfisch himself is joined by conventional strings,
rhythmic woodwind figures, and harp accents to convey the themes for the
town, the dead boy that starts the group on its crusade, and, finally,
the bond those children form together. Opening and closing the score is
a light waltz on piano in "Every 27 Years" for the legend of the tale,
laced in the first cue by children's vocalizations that waft back and
forth in the left and right channels. Slightly optimistic woodwind and
choral tones, yearning to achieve the warmth of a James Horner character
theme, establish false hope in "Paper Boat," and related material is a
similarly soft and tonal attraction in "Derry," "Beverly," and
"Georgie's Theme." More urgent development of those ideas in "Derry
History" and "Return to Neibolt" offer accessible determination and
gravity to the music. One nice red herring along this journey is
"Georgie Found," which is intentionally non-descript in its avoidance of
the character's prior theme. The trio of "Yellow Raincoat," "Blood
Oath," and "Kiss" nicely wrap the character development with the score's
most heart-warming ensemble moments. Meanwhile, as the film progresses,
Wallfisch seems tentative about how to handle Pennywise thematically,
ranging from outright carnival manipulation in "Epilogue" to the choral
fantasy awe of "Pennywise's Tower." Overall, the score for It is
technologically impressive, its mix highly commendable not only for the
boisterous explosions of sound during the fright sequences, but for the
clarity of the ensemble lines throughout. The harp in particular shines
despite all the surrounding chaos. But those explosions of ear-shredding
manipulation are truly unlistenable, begging further questions about
whether "louder" and "more complex" are really the answer to horror
music innovation. The tonal portions could be assembled into quite a
solid presentation given that 87 minutes of music were released for the
soundtrack, but even here, Wallfisch does not enunciate any of his
melodies (with the exception of one striking brass sequence at 0:49 into
"He Didn't Stutter Once") with enough clarity for audiences to be able
to identify anything suitable as a "franchise theme" for a concept that
was ripe for such connections. It's smart music that didn't quite
achieve its aim. Cautiously approach its long album with realistic
expectations. ***@Amazon.com: CD or
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